Boy's Cinema (1939-40)

"That's good logic, Dugan. Assign Blake to locate Bixby—and you stay on his tail." "All right, Commissioner," nodded the fuming captain, "I will." Danny restored the photograph of the heel-print to its envelope, and the two went out together. They passed the secre- tary at his desk, and a little gate in a rail swung behind them. Danny opened a door on to a corridor, and in the corridor he turned to Dugan. "Well, how did I do?" he asked. "Oh, great—great" said Dugan venom- ously. "Why, I was only trying " "Only makin' a sucker out of me in front of the Commissioner! We're doin' things my way now—I'm bringing Bixby in!" In spite of his wrath, he gave Danny a lift to the station-house, and he told him on the way that he could change into his own clothes and "pretend" to be a detective. Danny, highly delighted, made straight for the locker-room when the pplice station was reached. He saw Grazzi at the locker that had been Mike Casey's, and went over to him. "Hallo, Grazzi!" he said jubilantly. " You know I'm in plain clothes, too, now!" Grazzi was taking Casey's belongings from the locker to pack them into a parcel so that they could be sent to the widow. He showed Danny a photograph of a plump and jolly looking woman, with a youth on one side of her and a girl of about fourteen on the other. "Casey's wife and his two youngsters," he said. "By the way, Casey had your trick gun." He took the camera-gun from the locker. "Was it fired?" asked Danny eagerly. "Fii'ed?" Grazzi stared at him. "What difference does it make?" "Plenty!" The " trinket" was handed over, and Danny discarded his uniform in haste, put on his own check suit and grey soft- felt hat, and went off to a photographer's studio a little way along West Thirtieth Street. In less than half an hour he was back at the station and leaning over Captain Bill Dugan's desk, with a bromide enlarge- ment in his hand and an expression of triumph in his blue eyes. " Casey took that with my camera-gun just before they got him!" he said excitedly. Dugan gaped at a picture of Mickey West and Chuck Morris, looking out from the dark grey saloon. Chuck taking aim with his six-shooter. He recognised the two crooks instantly, and his scorn for scientific crime detection was forgotten— at all events, for the time being. "Chuck Morris and Mickey West!" he exclaimed. "Thanks, kid!" Knowing the favourite haunts of prac- tically all the crooks in town, he lost no time in setting out for a drinking-saloon on the lower East Side. He did not take Danny with him, but he took Grazzi, and he himself was in plain clothes. Grazzi was left in the official car at the corner of Front Street and Peck Street, and Dugan entered the semi-underground saloon alone. He gazed keenly about him as he crossed the long and smoky bar-room to the bar. "Hallo!" he said to the shirt-sleeved man behind it. "You seen Chuck Morris ■ind Mickey West around?" The bar-tender rolled a half-consumed 3igar from one side of a thick-lipped mouth to the other. "Not around here, cap," he drawled. "I 3on't let' them nervous guys in—if you know what I mean." Dugan knew what he meant: Mickey and Chuck were altogether too fond of drawing their guns, with or without pro- vocation. "Who's in the back room?"' he ques- tioned. "Just a couple o' the boys." was the reply. "They don't know nuthin'." "Oh. you can't tell!" said Dugan grimly. Ndvcmljcr Utli, 1939 BOY'S CLNEMA "They might—after I've had a chat with them. You know, friendly like." The bar-tender shrugged, and Dugan strode over to the swing-doors of a smaller room. The two "boys" inside it sprang up from a table as he burst in upon them. They were typical hoodlums, and the police were poison to them. "Hallo!" said Dugan curtly. "You know where Chuck Morris is hanging out?" Their ugly faces became masks. "Chuck?" growled one of them. "I ain't his brother. Don't ask me.'' "I ain't askin' you," rasped Dugan. "I'm tellin' you to tell me!" "I don't know nuthin'—nuthin' at all." "No?" Dugan seized him by the shoulder with his right hand and swung his left fist to an unshaven jaw with such violence that the fellow went backwards over a chair that crashed to the floor with him. "How about you?" The second hoodlum shrank back against a wall from the fist that threat- ened him. He was a smaller man than the one on the floor, and he did not want to be hurt. "All right,"' he growled. "Five-sixteen, West Forty-Eighth Street." Dugan turned and went back to the bar, nursing his knuckles. "Drinks are on me in there," he said to the bar-tender, with a grin, and was gone. BIXBY WALKS OUT ON his way to West Forty-Eighth Street, Dugan stopped to speak into a police telephone in Broadway, and by the time Grazzi had parked the car out of sight in a yard near the address for which they were bound, that particular portion of Forty-Eighth Street was full of officers, some in plain clothes, some in uniform. Dugan and Grazzi mounted the worn stone steps of a lodging-house and entered a wide and not ill-funiished hall. The landlady met them there, a fat and almost waistless woman in a spotted frock. She had been looking out of a window, and v/hen Dugan explained matters she be- came alarmed. "Oh, mercy!" she exclaimed. "Why do you want to surround the place with police?" "'Don't worry, lady," returned Dugan. "You won't be able to see "em." She led the way to a door nearly oppo- site the foot of a staircase, and she pro- duced a bunch of keys. "That's their room. They said they'd be back in a few minutes." "Okay," nodded Dugan. "Just lock me up in there and go on about your business like nothing happened." The door was opened and he stepped into a fairly large bed-sitting-room, the most conspicuous features of which were twin beds and a long window-seat in a bay. The landlady locked him in and went oft up the stairs. Grazzi walked away to the back of the hall. It was dusk in the street and dark in the room. Dugan switched on the lights and began a swift but thorough search. He found nothing of importance in the drawers of a bureau, or in the drawers of a dressing-table, taut he found a six- gun under the mattress of one of the beds and pocketed it. Chuck Morris and Mickey West had entered the hall by then, carrying groceries in paper bags. Dugan heard a key in the loc'ic of the door, and he darted over to the light switch and plunged the room into darkness. He was crouching behind the door when Mickey opened it, and Chuck followed him into the room and turned the lights on again. "Close the door, mug," directed Mickey. Dugan slammed the door with his shoulder and stood facing them with Chuck's own gun in his hand. "It's closed," he said. They stood gaoing at him, cumbered with their purchases, and he . leapt at them. Mickey West was sent sprawling ^very Tuesday backwards over a table; Chuck received a blow in the face from the barrel of the gun that rocked liim on his feet. Mickey rose up and flung himself upon the enemy; but Dugan, in spite of his years, was hard as steel and liked nothing better than a rough-house with the odds against him. Mickey was thrown off, slipped on some butter that had escaped from one of the fallen bags, and slid grotesquely half under one of the beds. Chuck, recovering his balance, drove a vicious left to Dugan's jaw—and received a thump 'oetween the eyes that jolted him pretty badly. Grunts and groans, and thuds and bangs, brought Grazzi out from his hid- ing-place and the landlady down the stairs. Some of her other lodgers ran out from their rooms. "Oh, lands!" gasped the landlady, quivering like a jelly. The noise continued for quite a while, and Grazzi was thinking seriously of dis- obeying orders and taking part in the fray when suddenly the door was opened and Captain Bill Dugan staggered out into the hall, his hair dishevelled, his right cheek bruised, his tie outside his coat, and his hat in his hand. "You all right, cap?" asked Grazzi anxiously. "Oh, you're hurt!" cried the landlady. "Not me, lady," corrected Dugan, and he jerked a thumb towards the room that had become as silent as any tomb. "All right, Grazzi—pick 'em up." On the following morning, between ten and eleveji o'clock, Charles Bixby was arrested in Fifth Avenue by two of Dugan's men, and the desk-sergeant at the police-station announced his arrival. "All right," said Dugan, who was in his own room, talking to Danny and Grazzi. " send him in." Bixby was marched into the room by his captors, who stood on either side of him. He was looking very smart in a striped suit, and he did not betray the slightest concern. " Nice of you to drop in, Mr. Bixby," said Grazzi, with heavy sarcasm. "I heard you wanted me," returned the captive irt kind, " and I didn't want to put you to any bother." He gazed about him and sniffed. " Still the same cheerful little place, eh? Like a morgue." "Thanks," said Dugan dryly. "Have a seat." "Sure, as long as it isn't a hot one." Bixby walked over to a wooden armchair, sat down in it. and crossed his legs. " You boys must be slipping. No rubber hose?" The two officers who had brought him in went out. Bixby pushed his hat over the back of his head and smiled at the remain- ing three. "We've got just enough for bridge," he drawled, "but I don't suppose anyone re- membered to bring cards." Grazzi trod deliberately on the patent- leather shoe that was on the floor, and Bixby winced. ""Why don't you keep your foot where it belongs?" he demanded angrily. "Don't tempt me, Mr. Bixby," mocked Grazzi. Captain Bill Dugan put his hands on the desk and leaned forward. " Bixby." he said sternly, " a cop was shot and killed. We've grabbed the two trigger- men, but the man who engineered the job has just walked in at that door. How would you like to go up the creek for twenty years?" Bixby raised his brows as though sur- prised. "For what—my health?" "No!" thundered Dugan. "For the Blue Diamond job. Or don't you read the news- papers?" "You'll need some more opium for that pipe dream," sneered the crook. "Save that for the jury. The porter identified you from a pretty picture we've got on the records." Bixby did not even blink. "And what do I do with my six wit» nesses," he blandly inquired, "who swear I